Thematic Subject Area II: Confronting Terrorism
Working Group 8
Military Responses

March 8th, the International Summit on Democracy and Terrorism will host a ten member working group that will look how the military can respond to an enemy who does not hold territory or wear an uniform. It will examine the military’s role and its limitations in responding to global terrorism. The following questions will be answered:

• In which situations can the military make an effective contribution, and when does its use become potentially counterproductive?
• What possible lessons can be learned from past experiences where military force was employed in counter-terrorist operations, such as in Northern Ireland?
• Is it possible to identify specific tasks that should be performed by the military?
• Discussion of whether there is a distinctively democratic approach for using the military in the fight against terrorism.

The conclusions of this working group and 16 others will be incorporated into the Agenda of Madrid, which will be published on March 11th, 2005.

Working group members will include:

Working Group Coordinator:

• Lawrence Freedman (UK), professor of war studies at King’s College, London. Prominent strategist and expert on contemporary security issues. Authored and edited numerous books, including Superterrorism (Blackwell 2002).

Members:

• Miguel Angel Ballesteros (Spain) (Col), Lectures on terrorism and asymmetrical conflict at numerous Spanish universities. Chief of the Department of Strategy at the Senior Staff College of the Spanish Army.
• Virginia Gamba (South Africa), director of SaferAfrica, Pretoria. Main interests are peace, security and safety in Africa and Latin America, North-South security issues, and South-South Cooperative Security. Co-authored, among other books, Signals of War (Faber and Faber 1991).
• Louis Gautier (France), senior military adviser to former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Formerly adviser to President Francois Mitterrand, first on internal security, then on defence. Author of Mitterrand et son armée (Grasset 1999).
• Roger Karlsson (Sweden) (Maj), researcher at the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College. Main research interests are the use of technology – especially information technology – in low-intensity conflicts and the fight against terrorism.
• Gustav Lindstrom (Sweden-France), senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. At the Institute, Dr. Lindstrom deals with terrorism, transatlantic relations, non-proliferation, and space issues.
• Satish Nambiar (India) (Lt Gen), director of the council at the United Services Institution of India. Former UN force commander in Yugoslavia and member of UN Secretary-General High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.
• Andreas Vogt (Norway) (Lt), program director at The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Former participant in several military peace operations, including as a forward air controller during the Kosovo conflict. Main interests are peace-keeping, African security, intervention and terrorism.
• David Wright-Neville (Australia), senior lecturer at Monash University, Australia. Former senior terrorism analyst with the Australian intelligence service. Expert on extremism and terrorism in Asia, religiously motivated terrorism and counter-terrorism.
• Funmi Olomikasin (Nigeria-UK), co-founder of the Centre for Democracy and Development, London. Formerly with the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, she is an expert on civil-military relations and peace-keeping (especially in Africa), as well as child soldiers.